Well, not bad (15 SEP 2001):

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

"anyone who doesn't recognize that the 4T isn't just coming, it's here, is in denial."
said Brian Rush.

I may still be there!

This may be the 4T, but it will depend on whether this attack triggers other events such as an economic collapse, and whether the current mood is sustained. That in turn will depend on how long the war against terrorism and its complications are sustained.

We are in a crisis mood now, but it may not last. Certainly our attitudes are shifting toward the typical 4T attitudes described by Strauss and Howe-- for now. Remember however that I very clearly predicted, astrologically, that the USA would go to war in the summer of 2001. I also said that, however dangerous it seemed, it would not be THE crisis. The fact that my prediction came true, means also that my prediction that this is not THE crisis may also bear attention. My prediction has been that this war will last about a year. After that, the current mood may dissipate, and a longer-lasting Crisis mood may not start until the end of this decade. If the Crisis is now beginning, then it will last for almost 30 years! The climax will come on schedule; that much is easy to predict, and it won't come until after 2026. In any case, though the authors have drawn sharp lines between turnings, in fact they are not sharp at all and opinions differ on just when they have begun. We may already have been in a Crisis by 1850, for example, and out of one before 1794. Did the post-war periods after 1865 and 1945 also represent the last part of Crises, just as the early 1790s might have been? Historians could easily differ. When did the current 3T start? Opinions differ.

We are in a war, but how much of the public is needed to fight it is questionable. Very specialized and specific efforts will be needed to fight terrorism. We may invade Afghanistan, and the question then will be how that goes, what it requires of the public, and what it leads to.

We may not know for a year whether we are truly in the 4T. We could be, and we might not be. We also may never definitely decide the question.

...but I don't think astrology was necessary. Anyone want to start an "Eric the Astrologer" thread?

4T? What 4T?

If we really and truly were in one, people with my basic political mindset would be ruling the roost; instead, we're bigger pariahs than ever.

When I look at 1992, I don't see how anything has fundamentally changed. We're still in the world Pat Buchanan identified in his infamous speech in Houston at the Republican Convention; and the revelations that have just come out about Paula Deen will clearly help her in half the country. Meanwhile, George Zimmerman will probably "even the score" by getting away with murder the same way O.J. did.

4T?

Right Said Fred is still too sexy for his shirt.

Originally Posted by '58 Flat

4T? What 4T?

If we really and truly were in one, people with my basic political mindset would be ruling the roost; instead, we're bigger pariahs than ever.

When I look at 1992, I don't see how anything has fundamentally changed. We're still in the world Pat Buchanan identified in his infamous speech in Houston at the Republican Convention; and the revelations that have just come out about Paula Deen will clearly help her in half the country. Meanwhile, George Zimmerman will probably "even the score" by getting away with murder the same way O.J. did.

4T?

Right Said Fred is still too sexy for his shirt.

You assume that this 4T must mimics prior crises. I certainly don't.

http://www.debka.com/article/23088/M...Tanks-in-Cairo

Military coup underway in Cairo: President Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood leaders held. Tanks in Cairo

Tanks were moving on the October 6 Nile Bridge in the heart of Cairo Wednesday, July 3, shortly after President Mohamed Morsi was removed from his palace and taken to a military base. Muslim Brotherhood leaders are also believed under arrest. Security travel bans have been issued against Brotherhood leaders. Sources in Cairo report that they will be tried for “crimes” committed during their year in office. A formal announcement is awaited by the military council after President Morsi and his government refused to stand down in response to the defense minister’s ultimatum Wednesday, July 3. The generals have taken over the state television newsroom and are monitoring content. No clashes are so far reported between the rival demonstrators of Morsi’s supporters and opponents packing central Cairo.
Prime Minister Hisham Kandil and his remaining ministers have left their offices with their possessions. The military is expected to install a provisional council to rule Egypt and prepare new elections. Defense minister Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi spent the afternoon conferring with leading politicians and clerics. Muslim Brotherhood leaders refused to attend.
Tuesday night, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi rejected the Defense Minister‘s demand that he quit to avert a bloodbath. He said he stood by his “constitutional dignity and demanded the army’s withdrawal of its ultimatum.

DEBKAfile: The general acted after Interior Minister Gen. Muhammad Ibrahim offered to place all police, internal security and intelligence forces at the disposal of the army because they no longer defer to the authority of the president or the Muslim Brotherhood government. This virtual “coup” enabled the army to jump the gun by 24 hours on its ultimatum to Morsi.

This military's action was not quite a “coup,” but it snatched away the Muslim Brotherhood government’s buttress of organized security forces, leaving only loyal adherents as a last prop.
The army thus jumped the gun by 24 hours on its ultimatum to the president to “heed the will of the people” - or else. This move played out as huge rival demonstrations gathered in Cairo at separate locations with no police in evidence to hold back the sporadic bouts of violence, which are expected to spread. Already, sixteen people were killed in three separate violent clashes between supporters and opponents of the Islamist president. Another huge anti-government took place in Alexandria as well as other Egyptian cities.

Military circles indicated that to defuse the crisisthe army would force the regime to transfer ruling authority to an interim council made up of citizens and technocrats and entrusted with drafting a new constitution and preparing early elections for president.

Those sources did not disclose what would happen to Morsi and whether he would stay on in the meantime as a figurehead president without executive powers.

President Morsi and the Muslim Brothers are hardly likely to lie down for this roadmap out of the crisis, because it would mean relinquishing power after just one year, at the end of decades of being pushed to the fringes of Egypt’s political scene.

But there isnot much they can do. Their call to turn out and demonstrate for the Islamic flag Tuesday brought out their own followers and no one else, whereas the opposition is not only backed by millions of assorted groups but has now gained the support of the army, the police, the security service and the intelligence agency.

Read the earlier DEBKAfile report from Tuesday morning.
US President Barack Obama and Chief of US General Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey intervened in the Egyptian crisis early Tuesday, July 2, in an attempt to save the besieged President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood. Obama called the Egyptian president and Gen. Dempsey phoned Chief of staff Gen. Sedki Sobhi, hoping to defuse the three-way crisis between the regime, the army and the protest movement before it gets out of hand.

The crash of Morsi’s presidency would seriously undermine the objectives of the Arab Revolt pursued by the Obama administration as the arch-stone of his Middle East policy.
The administration had earlier sought unsuccessfully to persuade the heads of the Egyptian army not to issue its 48-hour ultimatum to Egypt’s rulers “heed the will of the people” by Wednesday afternoon - or else the army would intervene. The Americans proposed instead to leave Morsi in place after stripping him of presidential authority and installing a transitional government to prepare the country for new elections to the presidency and parliament.

DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources report that the army chiefs led by Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi rejected the American proposal.
Obama promised to back steps taken by President Morsi to show he is “responsive to the opposition’s concerns,” while Gen. Dempsey asked Egyptian generals to moderate their stand against the Muslim Brotherhood. The underlying message was that if they failed to do so, Washington might reconsider its $1.3 billion annual military assistance package which is the main source of income for the armed forces.
Heartened by the US president’s vote of support, Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamic allies, rejected the army’s ultimatum for resolving the country’s deadly crisis, saying it would sow confusion and ran contrary to the Egyptian constitution.
Morsi insisted he would stick to his own plans for national reconciliation.
His regime is meanwhile crumbling: Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr resigned early Tuesday, the sixth minister to quit the government in the last 24 hours. He follows the president’s military adviser Gen. Sami Anan, former chief of staff under President Hosni Mubarak. Senior judges and high police officers were seen taking part in the anti-government protest rallies of the last week.
Morsi and the Brotherhood now face two ultimatums: If by Tuesday afternoon, he has not agreed to step down and call an early election, the organizers of the protest movement, which has brought millions to the streets of Egyptian cities, will launch a relentless and anarchic campaign of civil disobedience. The defense minister says the army will intervene if the government fails “to heed the will of the people” by Wednesday afternoon.
The Muslim Brotherhood and its radical allies are now considering whether to fully mobilize their adherents for “processions” and counter-demonstrations. This would take Egypt to the brink of a violent and prolonged escalation with incalculable consequences.

- the 3rd of July?

So much for the Facebook Islamists.

Social networks cannot stand up to ordnance.

Tourists may be afraid of Islamists. They may also be afraid of coups and revolutions.

(Maybe it's a good thing Manhattan was more dependent on beaver pelts than Japanese tourists in 1776. [Factually speaking it may have been even worse: I find out that New York gets more tourists from the UK every year than any other country.])

Originally Posted by playwrite

http://www.debka.com/article/23088/M...Tanks-in-Cairo



- the 3rd of July?

Yeah neocon baby.
Let's go into Syria full bore.
They'll let us rebuild their country too.

Fuck it, let's go into Syria AND Egypt. We'll rebuild the shit out 'em.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Fuck it, let's go into Syria AND Egypt. We'll rebuild the shit out 'em.

Now ya talkin' !!

just kidding

Egyptian military fires on Muslim Brotherhood, at least 51 killed, hundreds injured.

On the positive side, the interim government issued a timetable for constitutional reform, followed by parliamentary elections, followed by a presidential election by next February.

Yes, they also nominated a Nobel Prize winning liberal politician as interim Prime Minister, until he was forced to withdraw. It will be interesting to see how things play out, and how closely those timetables are adhered to, if at all. Interesting, of course, because I am an ocean away.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

Yeah neocon baby.
Let's go into Syria full bore.
They'll let us rebuild their country too.

I didn't catch this before.

Are you referring to me as being a "NeoCon baby?"

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

You assume that this 4T must mimics prior crises. I certainly don't.

Maybe I'm guilty of not stating my case persuasively enough, as I mentioned nothing about the red-blue divide - a conscious imitation of the 1850s.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...138584,00.html

...the majority of Americans think the 2003 invasion of Iraq 10 years ago this month was a tragic mistake, there's no reliable way of telling what proportion of Iraqis feel the same way.

...my informal polling of Iraqis turned up little interest in the rights or wrongs of the invasion itself: there was a general, if grudging, consensus that it was the only way they were going to be rid of Saddam Hussein...

...events of the past two years have encouraged Iraqis to ponder a tantalizing hypothetical: Could their dictator have been toppled by the Arab Spring?

Shortly after Tunisia's Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak were removed from office by popular uprisings, I wrote a column on TIME.com arguing that Saddam would not have been forced out by peaceful protests. Iraqi youth activists... lacked the tools of their Tunisian and Egyptian peers: Saddam forbade satellite dishes, and economic sanctions--in place since his troops were kicked out of Kuwait in 1991--meant Iraqis could have neither personal computers nor cell phones. That meant no Facebook, no Twitter, not even text messages. And no al-Jazeera to spread the word from Baghdad to other cities.

...Saddam would have had no compunction ordering a general slaughter of revolutionaries... the Iraqi generals would swiftly have complied. They had already demonstrated this by killing tens of thousands of Shi'ites who rose against the dictator after his Kuwaiti misadventure...

If the Tunisian and Egyptian templates could not have been applied to Iraq, might the Libyan and Syrian models have worked? That would have required an armed rebellion rising from a part of the country where the dictator's grip was at its weakest and where antiregime forces would have a safe haven--like Benghazi in Libya.

The most logical place for an armed uprising against Saddam was Kurdistan, in northern Iraq, which enjoyed a high degree of autonomy from Baghdad and the protection of U.S. aircraft enforcing a no-fly zone. But the Kurds are a separate ethnic group, long resentful of being ruled by Iraq's Arab majority...

That leaves only the Syrian example: a long, bloody rebellion that devolves into a sectarian war. Iraq already had its version in 1991, and the regime won easily...

Hundreds die in crackdown on Egyptian protests.

Whew, between this and Assad's recent victories, the grand trine of peace and reconciliation finally seems to have hit in full force.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

..."the grand trine"...

Now, Jordan. Play nice.
(giggle!)


Prince

PS: "Trine". Too funny! !
(still laughing)

Originally Posted by '58 Flat

... If we really and truly were in one, people with my basic political mindset would be ruling the roost...

-Ha ha ha! Another guy who thinks that 4T means "I get my way."

Prophet much?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/wo...t.html?hp&_r=1&

... President Obama strongly condemned the government’s use of brute force and martial law to crush the protests and said the United States had canceled scheduled military exercises with the Egyptian armed forces scheduled for next month...

But he said nothing about cutting the $1.5 billion in annual aid that the United States provides to Egypt and acknowledged that the United States has historically regarded the country as a friend and a “cornerstone for peace in the Middle East.”

The real question is, why were we giving $1.5 Billion a year to the Islamic Brotherhood?!

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Hundreds die in crackdown on Egyptian protests.

Whew, between this and Assad's recent victories, the grand trine of peace and reconciliation finally seems to have hit in full force.

Well, not exactly helped by the current T-square of Mars-Uranus-Pluto this month!

Not what I hoped for or predicted, at least not there, yet. But there have still been some breakthroughs in other places. There was a whole list of them. And Egypt at least was given a chance by a new movement for freedom. It seems to have been betrayed now. The real question is where the ouster of Morsi in July 2013 will eventually lead the country. Civil war and military rule, or the new constitutional process that has also begun. The outcome of a Uranus-Pluto revolutionary era like ours is never easy, and outcomes not guaranteed, even by a grand trine that comes along.

Keep me on my toes though Jordan.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Well, not exactly helped by the current T-square of Mars-Uranus-Pluto this month!

-Yes. I'm sure that's it.

I'm surprised to see that there wasn't an existing Egypt thread but I don't want to start one right now. So this will have to do.

I think Egypt illustrates a common mistake that new democracies seem to make, not having crafting a constitution until after people are put into power. Without any restraining principles, anyone put into power will have an unlimited access to it. As they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Thankfully the US had someone like George Washington and a strong support staff. Otherwise it could've turned into a failed state like France did under Napoleon.

Banning a party or marginalizing a people isn't going to solve things, it will probably make it worse. The solution is to first have a representative body or even at least a consensus of leaders put together a constitution before putting any one person or group into executive power. Then if they are smart, this constitution should also have measures built in to ensure that its power is not ignored or usurped.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/20/politi...aid/index.html The Obama administration is withholding some military aid to Egypt as it reviews how it wants to proceed...

...which begs the question of why ALL the aid wasn't cut off when the Muslim Brotherhood was in charge.

Originally Posted by Ghost Echo

I'm surprised to see that there wasn't an existing Egypt thread but I don't want to start one right now. So this will have to do.

I think Egypt illustrates a common mistake that new democracies seem to make, not having crafting a constitution until after people are put into power. Without any restraining principles, anyone put into power will have an unlimited access to it. As they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Thankfully the US had someone like George Washington and a strong support staff. Otherwise it could've turned into a failed state like France did under Napoleon.

Banning a party or marginalizing a people isn't going to solve things, it will probably make it worse. The solution is to first have a representative body or even at least a consensus of leaders put together a constitution before putting any one person or group into executive power. Then if they are smart, this constitution should also have measures built in to ensure that its power is not ignored or usurped.

What seemed to happen, is that an entrenched military toppled its leader and took over. They were slow to set up the constitutional convention. They had a presidential election before the constitution was in effect (that was your point and I agree). Meanwhile the new rebels did not politically organize themselves. They thought they could determine things with mass demonstrations and occupations alone. So when Egypt had parliamentary elections, the most-organized group won and wrote a constitution that benefits themselves, and got it ratified. They had already elected a president who was suppressing opposition and steering society toward their own religious and authoritarian goals. So he had to be deposed in turn. Now the only hope is that the military coup government carries out the democratic program it says it wants. The narrative that the pro-Morsi protesters were violent will have to be accepted by the people.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...pinion_LEADTop

...Releasing deposed President Mohammed Morsi and other detained Brotherhood leaders may be realistic, but it is not desirable—unless you think Aleksandr Kerensky was smart to release the imprisoned Bolsheviks after their abortive July 1917 uprising.

Restoring the dictatorship-in-the-making that was Mr. Morsi's elected government is neither desirable nor realistic—at least if the millions of Egyptians who took to the streets in June and July to demand his ouster have anything to do with it.

Bringing the Brotherhood into some kind of inclusive coalition government in which it accepts a reduced political role in exchange for calling off its sit-ins and demonstrations may be desirable, but it is about as realistic as getting a mongoose and a cobra to work together for the good of the mice...

What's realistic and desirable is for the military to succeed in its confrontation with the Brotherhood as quickly and convincingly as possible...

And it beats the alternatives. Alternative No. 1: A continued slide into outright civil war resembling Algeria's in the 1990s. Alternative No. 2: Victory by a vengeful Muslim Brotherhood, which will repay its political enemies richly for the injuries that were done to it. That goes not just for military supremo Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and his lieutenants, but for every editor, parliamentarian, religious leader, businessman or policeman who made himself known as an opponent of the Brotherhood...

Of course there's the argument that brute repression by the military energizes the Brotherhood. Maybe. Also possible is that a policy of restraint emboldens the Brotherhood. The military judged the second possibility more likely. That might be mistaken, but at least it's based on a keener understanding of the way Egyptians think than the usual Western clichés about violence always begetting violence...

http://nationalinterest.org/commenta...8917?page=show

...Part of the problem lies in the misperception, trumpeted by leading American media and some political leaders, that Egypt was undergoing a "transition to democracy" following President Mubarak’s overthrow in 2011. True, Morsi was elected in his country's first free elections, but Egypt, under the thrall of the Muslim Brotherhood, was undergoing democratization only in the sense that Germany was after free elections gave rise to the Nazis in 1932...

To become a Brother is not like registering for the Republican or Democratic parties. The aspiring member undergoes an exhaustive vetting process that can take eight years, in which his total devotion to the Brotherhood is intensely scrutinized. The aspirant will be first inducted into a local neighborhood cell, to which he must devote a considerable portion of his time, faithfully carrying out organizational duties, and which will assess every aspect of his life, both party-related and private, in minute detail. Over the years, the successful aspirant will join successively broader cells which will continue screening his complete ideological purity and commitment. Rather than a political party, it is more like an underground movement.

It is also rabidly anti-American, fundamentally opposed to the values of freedom and pluralism that most Americans cherish, and blatantly anti-Semitic. That the first targets attacked by Muslim Brotherhood supporters in recent days included tens of Christian sites and museums is indicative...

Obama made two egregious errors in his treatment of Egypt since events there began unfolding in 2011.

He abandoned Mubarak too rapidly, at a time when the regime might still have been saved, although Obama had no other choice shortly thereafter when his demise became inevitable and defending him would have placed the United States on the "wrong side of history." Not for the first time, the United States turned on one of its friends, a moderate dictator, but not infinitely more heinous ones, to its own disadvantage. [I don't buy that one. Que Sera Sera]

Second, Obama continued "business as usual" following the Muslim Brotherhood's election, even when it became clear just how antidemocratic the Morsi government was. [Again, why didn't we cut off aid to the MB?]

He may now be making a third major error, strongly condemning the measures taken by the new military regime... and indicating that further measures may be in the offing... while concomitantly acquiescing to the regime’s actions in the hopes of preserving the basic relationship. This middle-of-the-road approach has succeeded only in gaining opprobrium from all sides in Egypt, strongly alienating the military regime and risking a rift...